The bungling behind the collapse of the West Coast Main Line franchise process will be laid bare today in a damning cross-party report.

FirstGroup had been handed the contract to run the West Coast main line

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The bungling behind the collapse of the West Coast Main Line franchise process will be laid bare today in a damning cross-party report.

Today’s report from the highly-respected public accounts committee blasts the Department for Transport for a lack of leadership and common sense.

The taxpayer has lost at least £50m as a result of the collapse of the £5bn franchise deal.

Committee member and Conservative Aberconwy MP Guto Bebb said: “It’s one of the worst examples I’ve seen of just crass management.”

Errors in the franchise process were so serious that in October Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin scrapped the decision to award the franchise to FirstGroup. Virgin will continue to run the West Coast service until November 2014 and then a new bidding process will start.

Labour committee chair Margaret Hodge was scathing in her analysis of one of the most embarrassing incidents to hit the coalition.

She said: “The Department for Transport’s complete lack of common sense in the way it ran the West Coast franchise competition has landed the taxpayer with a bill of £50m at the very least.

“If you factor in the cost of delays to investment on the line, and the potential knock-on effect on other franchise competitions, then the final cost to the taxpayer will be very much larger...

“The franchising process was littered with basic errors. The department yet again failed to learn from previous disasters... It failed to heed advice from its lawyers.

“It failed to respond appropriately to early warning signs that things were going wrong. Senior management did not have proper oversight of the project. Cuts in staffing and in consultancy budgets contributed to a lack of key skills.

“The project suffered from a lack of leadership. There was no single person responsible from beginning to end and, therefore, no one who had to live with the consequences of bad policy decisions. For three months, there was no single person in charge at all.

“Not only that, there was no senior civil servant in the team responsible for the work, despite the critical importance of this multi-billion pound franchise.

“We are astonished that the permanent secretary did not oversee the project because he was told he could not see all the information which might have enabled him to challenge the processes, although it was one of the most important tasks for which the department is responsible.”

Ms Hodge said the department must “get its house in order” .

The MPs are now concerned basic mistakes could be repeated in future projects such as the London to Birmingham high-speed HS2 scheme.

A UK Government spokesman said: “The independent Laidlaw inquiry published in November identified the unique and exceptional circumstances which led to failures in the West Coast franchising programme and crucially what steps the department should take to prevent this from happening again.

“The department has accepted all the recommendations and has taken immediate steps by bringing together all rail activity under a single director general and recruiting a senior director to lead the franchising programme, as well as improving internal governance and strengthening oversight and accountability.

“Not only will these reinforce the franchising process but will also protect other rail infrastructure projects such as HS2 and the biggest programme of rail electrification.”

Labour Garston and Halewood MP Ms Eagle said Prime Minister David Cameron must not pass the buck.

She said: “It is a disgrace that every politician responsible for the bungled franchise deal has either remained in the Cabinet or been promoted to it.”

Bob Crow, leader of the RMT transport union, said: “The stench from the fall-out of the West Coast franchise continues to hang over Britain’s transport industry as it becomes clearer with every examination that the ministers responsible for this shambles could not be trusted to run a whelk stall let alone multi-billion Government contracts.”